Hi, I'm
Michiel Van de Velde
An AI engineer from Belgium, working on AI and linked data.
How I got there
I studied Network & Security Engineering at Odisee, mainly to get a job.
I had great mentors who showed me the fun in building things, and that breaking them is just part of the process.
- Cabling
- Network
- Security
- AI models
- Compute
- Containers
- Storage
- Power
Cabling. Physical networking: patching, labelling, and tracing a fault back to one loose cable.
Network. Subnets, VLANs, DNS and DHCP: how traffic actually finds its way.
Security. Firewalls, VPNs and least privilege: exposing only what has to be exposed.
AI models. Running language models locally: sizing the hardware, and knowing what they're good at and what they cost.
Compute. Virtualisation: spinning up, snapshotting and throwing away servers without fear.
Containers. Deploying, updating and debugging every open-source project I could find.
Storage. RAID, backups and actually testing the restore, because it's my own data.
Power. Uptime: a UPS, clean shutdowns, and services that come back on their own.
Getting hooked
Naturally, I really got into self-hosting and AI.
At home I self-hosted every open-source project and model I could find and run.
Applying it for real
Then came the dengue dashboard. Hospitals, doctors and non-profits shared case data by hand, and processing it took days or even weeks.
We turned that tedious manual work into a web application.
We got handed a broken tool, with barely anything working properly, and turned it into something actually usable.
Contributing to the next generation of AI
After dengue I started an internship at imec-IDLab, where I stayed on as a student worker and will work as a full-on AI engineer!
Working on next-generation AI, knowledge graphs and the chips that run it.
Things I've worked on.
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Education
Bachelor ICT, Network & Security EngineerOdisee, cum laude
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2021 – 2025
IT for student organisationsWebsites, databases and security
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Sep 2025 – Mar 2026
DevOps, dengue early warningGhent University and ITM Antwerp
Getting outbreak data to doctors in time.
Case reports went from days by hand to a web app. I kept it running.
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Feb – May 2026
Internship and bachelor's thesisimec-IDLab, with Odisee
What if your data didn't have to live inside one platform?
Your media history in your own Solid pod, not on each platform. Graded 18/20.
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Jul – Sep 2026
Student job: AI and open sourceimec-IDLab
Hudson: an AI assistant for a research group.
Reviews code and picks up tasks from GitHub, on local models where possible.
Moving an open-source linked data server to TypeScript.
A large part of moving the Linked Data Fragments Server, 12 packages, to strict TypeScript.
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Sep 2026 – now
Board memberOpen Knowledge Belgium
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From Nov 2026
AI engineerimec-IDLab
What I'm curious about.
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Data sovereignty
Who decides what happens to your data?
People should have a say, and a real choice, including European alternatives.
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Knowledge graphs
How can independent systems understand each other's data?
Linked data lets services share data without losing its meaning.
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Self-hosted AI
How much AI can you run yourself, and when is a commercial model worth it?
Running local LLMs in my homelab is how I got into AI.
I'm also a board member of Open Knowledge Belgium.
This site is a knowledge graph.
578 RDF triples render this page. Query them.
Example questions
<id/me> a schema:Person ;
schema:name "Michiel Van de Velde" ;
pf:researchInterest <topics/data-sovereignty>,
<topics/knowledge-graphs>,
<topics/grounded-ai> ;
schema:alumniOf <org/odisee> ;
schema:memberOf <roles/okbe-board> ;
pf:role <roles/okbe-board>,
<roles/odisee-bachelor>,
<roles/student-organisations>,
<roles/dengue-devops>,
<roles/idlab-internship>,
<roles/idlab-student-job>,
<roles/idlab-ai-engineer> .Let's work together.
Building something with infrastructure, linked data or AI? Let's talk.
michiel.vdvelde@outlook.com